Artemis Primary Sources Metadata Review

Artemis Primary Sources is a database that holds a large number of historical primary sources. Each source has the same set of metadata attached to it. The source will have the citation of the source: its title, publication, page numbers, and date. There will also be a section of notes that usually gives a brief description of the source. The metadata will only act as a means to provide a citation. It will not describe the content outside of the brief note, if one has been entered. The metadata also does not provide any information on whether there are any photographs within the source (unless the source itself is a photograph, which will appear in the citation). If a user has an account, the possibility of creating and viewing tags about the source becomes available.

The metadata allows the researcher to ask what the source is called, where it comes from, and what period of time it was published. It will allow questions regarding the type of sources available for that subject, i.e. newspaper articles, manuscripts, etc. A key part missing from the metadata is how the object was digitized: was it scanned or photographed, when was it digitized, what format did the images come in as?